Angela Merkel's predecessor, Gerhard Schröder, was the first German chancellor spared any memory of the Hitler years. That explains why, the story goes, he was the first German leader to view the European Union pragmatically, as a utilitarian, not an idealistic project.

With the second world war, the EU's founding myth, ever more remote from the generation of leaders in power in Europe, Merkel is considered to have continued that trend – putting Germany first, indirectly insisting that to succeed Europe has to become more German.

The sovereign debt and single currency crises of the past two years have raised existential issues about the EU, questions about its longevity and survival, which would have appeared ludicrous if asked only a few years ago.

In the intensity of the crisis, with Merkel and Germany thrust unambiguously, if reluctantly, into the top seat at the EU table, the chancellor seems to be gradually discovering her inner European.

In an interview in the gleaming Berlin chancellery with the Guardian and partner newspapers from France, Italy, Spain, Poland and Germany, Merkel's talk of a European polity with national powers ceded to a European government smacks more of Helmut Kohl, Joschka Fischer, or Germany's veteran political philosopher Jürgen Habermas than it does of the cautious chancellor who did not enter politics until the Berlin Wall came down when she was 35.

It falls to Merkel, more than any other politician, to save Europe. The crisis has concentrated her thinking. It has taken a while, but the commitment and the passion seem to be emerging.

"Our union is our good fortune," she emphasised. "It is our good fortune that we are united, and it is only in a united Europe that we [Germans] will continue to prosper."

The German and the European common interests coincide, Merkel avers, echoing Helmut Kohl's mantra in the era of Maastricht and German reunification 20 years ago.

As a product of communist east Germany, Merkel brings quite a different perspective to the merits of Europe compared with the west Europeans who have run the union until now and who might take their inheritance for granted.

"For 35 years, until the wall came down, I suffered the restriction of not being able to just pop across to western Europe. It was my dream for that to be possible. This is my continent – a continent where people hold the same values dear that I do.

"This is a continent that can enable you to help shape the world, and stand up for the things that will safeguard the future of humanity – human dignity, freedom of opinion, freedom of the press, the right to protest, sustainability in business and mitigation of climate change."

German idealism appears to be reviving in the Berlin chancellery. But Merkel underlined that this is no longer enough if Europe is to escape decline, defeatism, and increasing irrelevance in the world.

"I don't want the EU to be a museum for all the things that used to be good. I want an EU which successfully strives to create new things. I know that this implies a massive change for some people, and that we will therefore need one another's support.

"If, however, we balk at these efforts, and just treat one another with kid gloves and water down any attempts at reform, we will definitely be doing Europe a disservice."

The many critics, however, will see that as Berlin dictating the agenda while others take the pain.

The two years of crisis have propelled Merkel into place as Europe's paramount leader, exposing the myth of French parity with the Germans at the top of the EU. That has also raised hackles everywhere else because of perceived high-handed prescriptions from Berlin combined with Merkel's maddening caution and refusal to be rushed in a crisis.

She is having none of it.

"I do take these concerns seriously, but they are unfounded. I also find it interesting how quickly certain stereotypes can be roused – in German discussions as much as anywhere else. We refer to 'the' Germans, 'the' Poles, 'the' French, 'the' Spanish and 'the' Greeks, and we imagine that we've got the people of each nation figured out … We can put the old stereotypes out to grass."

In a time of rising anti-EU populism across Scandinavia, Britain, the Netherlands, Austria, Italy, France, and parts of eastern Europe, Germany almost uniquely appears immune to mainstream political Euroscepticism, although the liberal Free Democrats, Merkel's junior coalition partner, are flirting with the notion in an attempt to reverse disastrous polling and election results.

The euro crisis and the bailouts have undoubtedly dented the German public's traditional satisfaction with the EU. But a paradox of German politics is that the two parties doing well at the moment, the social democrats and the Greens, are more pro-European than the government while the most Eurosceptic, the Free Democrats, are performing wretchedly.

"Let me make one thing absolutely clear – all the relevant political forces in Germany are completely committed to the EU," said the chancellor.

It's an assertion that is accurate, but could be made about barely any other EU country outside the Iberian peninsula.

But if the Christian Democrat leader refuses to be rushed into spending German taxpayers' money to bail out the eurozone periphery, she also sounds frustrated and impatient at the glacial pace of change in the Europe she effectively leads.

The EU may once have been a haven of harmony, she concedes, "but at the cost of all too often dodging difficult decisions. The EU would never be successful if we carried on like that, and it's a successful EU that I want to see … Right now, the EU still has 7% of the global population. If we don't stick together, the things we say and believe will go pretty much unnoticed. That European idea of peace, values and prosperity is my motive for doing what I do, and that's why I don't want us just to muddle through this crisis.

"I do what I do to the best of my abilities," Merkel said. "Everything I do comes out of my firm belief that we are extremely fortunate to have the EU – and we need to preserve that good fortune. If it weren't for the EU, our generation might well have gone to war against one another as others did."

Stefan Kornelius of Süddeutsche Zeitung, Javier Moreno of El País and Bartosz Wieliński of Gazeta Wyborcza contributed to this article